Log April 2
The idea is to live through this and don’t let it feel like a denial in the end. The idea is to exhaust ourselves and realize that we were never too far or too close to something ideal or recuperative. The idea is to sweep it under the rug and call it a day. It isn’t the most trivial passages I have ever written and keeping the record of the day is only slightly interesting. The days are all the same, it’s getting brighter and brighter every day.
I met an old teacher of mine while I was on my way to college. He acknowledged my writing when no one else did and I realized that he’d grown so old, that he had become a person of small talk. Time does that you; you are bent out of your shape and you become a radical product of your forgotten intricacies.
I never told him how he inspired me to keep writing or how much his small attention to my writing meant to me. As much as I struggled to get it out, it came from my heart and I thought he needed to hear something like this.
I was not asked for a uniform today, (Yes, we’re facing the freshman indifference, they’re trying to break our spirits but there’s a back gate they keep forgetting about) no one bothered if I walked in straight or twisted. There is a lot of hustle today; sometimes the guards have to open the gate a trillion times during the day. For a college avenue it has a rather busy traffic. The sun shines through the thick naked trees and some of us are wearing a monochrome shade of clothes and I am not one of those certainly.
It’s our English class; I’ve not seen anyone come yet. We’re discussing a play originally written in Marathi and later translated into English, about a woman in a patriarchal society and we know it goes sideways. Men have had their ways of marching into a woman’s life and thinking of it as insignificant— our professor has made a terrible mess of it, I am not sure if the play is bad or the professor. Hondo thinks he is cool for letting us waltz into his class even if we’re late sometimes. He waives his bad teaching only for the reason that he lets us come as we please.
There’s translated poem in the play that goes like this:
Our feet tread on upon unknown
And dangerous pathways evermore.
Wave after blinded wave is shattered
Stormily upon the shore.
Light glows alive again. Again
It mingles with the dark of night.
Our earthen hands burn out, and then
Again in flames they are alight.
Everything is fully known,
And everything is clear to see.
And the wound that’s born to bleed
Bleeds on forever, faithfully.
I found it deeply unnerving, not like I was scared or anything but it was deeply satisfying as it withheld inside its lines such intricacy that another writer felt the need to create a whole play to justify these lines through the life of a woman. Not surprisingly, the professor ruined these lines for me like he was blind to the power these couplets, and he just walked them over without realizing anything. It broke my heart so I have vowed to myself to enter twenty minutes late always in an unofficial protest.
Doodlebug and Moody were sitting on the unkempt steps of Bukhari Hall, our existence is etched to those corners and no one questions us. We’re the masters of our own freedom in certain volumes when we get to decide which class is not worth it but I suppose our meaning of freedom is only partly acceptable since it lacks defiance of some kind.
Doodlebug couldn’t attend the skills class which is ironical because we just write how-to instead of practically applying them. She has been assigned the task of finding speakers for some program happening in our college, there’s a banner that says its punctuality week, and I guess that’s what it is. I really want laugh though and by that I literally mean cry my eyes out. Amar Singh College is progressively ironic and they haven’t got a single clue about it.
Anyway, Moody’s failing love interest is a coming of age global crisis. There’s a freshman he likes and speaks highly of even though the dialogues never ensued. However, since the first eye contact, there have been no developments and its freaking me out because I survived and hour long ‘here’s my opinion’ talk from him.
There’s a test I couldn’t care less about my answers. Skills class is a practical joke. Period.
Doodlebug joined us back at the steps of Bukhari Hall. Idle as we were, she and I sang our heart’s content. Quietly that is, Hondo joined in too and told me to make up stuff in my presentation but I really can’t do it like he does, he lies with certain degree of air and you’ll never break his defense on things he firmly believes in. I can only learn a few definitions and immediately forget them. I have a bad case of memory.
Day before yesterday, after his presentation was over and our professor wanted reviews on it, I called him out for his unpreparedness. I couldn’t really get my point across because I was yet to formulate it properly. Since it was said, Hondo defended himself and when he asked me to prove my ‘allegation’; I broke sweat looking at him so defiantly calm. It was fucking artistic, I tell you.
After my presentation was over and I realized I’m a real stick-it-to-the-book more often than I can admit, it was Shakespeare’s turn. He was presenting on English Language, a very clichéd one but it sufficed him enough to get his hands off of it. Dick the mouth-breather wasn’t having it though; he wasn’t ready to accept English as a universally accepted language and ignorantly denied everything. I would fairly discard him from my life, I’m just saying.
The whole presentation took a serious u-turn because our two most ‘qualified’ students indulged in a situational dialogue that went back and forth to no end. Even going so far to tell the professor that she was wrong and at that point Hondo and I were practically dying inside. It was escalating, there was no stopping them. Dick the mouth-breather made no sense and we had to put up with it. It was brutal. Hondo, sadly repulsed, looked at the professor and imitated a gunshot to his head.
Even outside, Dick had the same undertone of ignorance. He is desperate to find a girlfriend and knowing his nature, we’ve offered no help nor do we intend of offering it in future. But that doesn’t stop him. We are not blind to his sudden exits and entrances, his excuses to run off and then roam around college. He has fooled himself into believing that we have no idea when we really do.
On very same day, on our way home, we heard him flocking a bunch of female passengers into a cab like he was a shepherd. “I think he’s secretly opened a Harem.” Hondo said in my ear and I couldn’t stop laughing. And when I confronted him about it he denied everything. I even saw the girl who he hangs out with go red and it was evident from her face that she was embarrassed to be seen walking with him. I’m sorry I’m complaining too much, almost like I hate the guy to bits. I don’t really
Karla called me while we were leaving college and asked if we could meet, sure enough we did. We met in Ground Zero, our usual place meet and nothing about it has changed, and I like that. She had bought a chew toy for her cat, it was so unbelievably soft but she’d not let me have it. I could only have it if her cat comes to hate it. (It didn’t.)
My existence to her is less trivial than her cat’s. That I know now. She was serious and she also confessed to being in love with more than a few people. Perhaps it was to hide the truth that her heart is miserable and has learned to love people from distance rather getting close to anyone. It is a sea of fire and you’ve have to drown inside it.
She complains that I never write her in my logs and I protested that I have but she probably doesn’t remember it. Again, our recollections are fleeting, terrible rather. This café has held out for hours, it’s almost like our second home and it isn’t complete with just the two of us sitting there laughing without a care. Our dearest poetofblues is in Bangalore and will be home soon. Then we could spend an entire day sitting here and mocking each other for good.
When we left, everything felt momentous and as we walked into the sun towards the bridge that connects to Jahangir Chowk, I told her I always miss them when I walk this bridge at this time and I walk it often. I have written about it, about her and about how happy and light I felt when I met her after I left Kashmir for Delhi for the first time ever.v